


Easter Baking - BUNNY BUM CUPCAKES!

by calvinahobbes



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Baking, Fluff, Gen, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-17
Updated: 2019-04-17
Packaged: 2020-01-14 12:35:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,208
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18476350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calvinahobbes/pseuds/calvinahobbes
Summary: Phil does a solo baking video. Kind of. (A write-up type fic of what I imagine the vid would look like.)





	Easter Baking - BUNNY BUM CUPCAKES!

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn’t stop imagining what a solo Phil baking vid would look like, so I ended up writing it out. Come with me if you too are in baking vid withdrawal and would just like to imagine what some canon-compliant Easter 2019 baking would look like. (PS: This is somewhat inspired by Julien Solomita’s "Aries cookie" video, which I loved a lot.)

The video starts with what is clearly a creep shot: Phil is sneaking around a corner and coming up behind Dan who is sitting by a desk in front of a stationary Mac. 

“Are you sure you won’t help me with the Easter baking, Dan?” he says in a voice that he is forcefully keeping deep and casual so as not to arouse suspicion.

Dan is about to answer and turn at the same time and goes through about a million emotions when he sees Phil’s iPhone in filming position. “What are you — don’t film me!” he sputters. For a second he motions as if to cover his face but then reaches to cover the screen. His nails are painted, not black, perhaps a dark brown. The screen is too bright to show anything between Dan’s fingers.

Phil laughs and Dan is already laughing as well. “Are you working?” Phil asks, a bit cheeky.

Dan gives him A Look, chin tipped towards his chest, but he’s having trouble keeping the smile off his face. “I am. I am working on my Top Secret Project.”

“And you don’t want to bake with me?” There’s a clear pout to Phil’s voice.

Dan turns around fully and stands, body easily blocking the screen. “Oh, Phil. We talked about this.” He mirrors Phil’s pout, looking at him and not the camera. “I definitely do want to bake with you, but if it has to be right now you’re on your own, mate.”

There’s an uncomfortable scrambly pan of the room as Phil turns the camera on himself. “Whaddaya say, guys? Wanna do some Easter baking with just me?” He wiggles his eyebrows.

“Wait, Phil?” Dan says from off-shot. There’s another motion sickness inducing turn. “I literally just cleaned the kitchen.” His voice is quiet, not joking, his face perhaps expressing mild concern.

“And I appreciate it!” Phils says cheerily. “It looks really good now, for my video. You’re such a good ... roommate.” 

Dan folds his arms and raises his eyebrow as high as it seems able to go. The shot wobbles as Phil giggles uncontrollably. [Cut to black.]

Phil is in the filming kitchen in front of the tripod mounted camera. He is wearing a navy blue apron with a bunny that says “I carrot wait for the Easter Bunny to visit”. Behind him on the cupboards is a banner string of easter eggs.

“Hi guys!” he says and waves. “So as Dan will not be joining us for THIS round of baking, I decided to do something a little different.” There’s a quick zoom to medium frame. “We eat pretty vegan these days, but seeing as we don’t bake a lot, we haven’t really had the chance to try out vegan baking yet. Now, I’ve scoured the Internet and I’ve found a recipe for cupcakes that seems promising, so I’m gonna try!” The zoom cuts back to full-frame. “I’m quite nervous though, I feel like so many things could go wrong. Not least of which is me being left unsupervised in a kitchen. But! I’m going to try really hard to be careful and not make a mess.”

He holds up the glass mixing bowl. “We are going to need: our trusty mixing bowl.” He puts it down with a bit too much force and winces at the clang. He picks up a smaller bowl. “Another mixing bowl.” He picks up a third bowl with the other hand. “And - another mixing bowl.” He puts them both down with exaggerated care, one scoots across the counter towards the camera, and he scrambles to catch it. For a moment he just stares wide-eyed into the camera. 

Phil stands back and crosses to the counter along the wall. “We will also need our electric mixer.” He holds it up. “I won’t fiddle with it until it’s time to use.”

[Jump cut.] Phil has the mixer plugged in, the beaters pointing towards his face, his head bent and nose dangerously close. He presses the “on” button and immediately jumps and squeaks at the violent motion. He stops it and stands still for a second, looking off camera as if he’s listening. There’s no audible sound, but then he yells, “Nothing!” [Cricket sounds and jump cut.]

Phil is back by the island directly in front of the camera. “For our ingredients! The most challenging thing about vegan baking, I think, is that we can’t use eggs.” [There’s an overlay of a baby chick in an egg with its eyes covered by red X’s. Then another chick mid-run, with exaggerated black motion lines behind it.] “But because we’re baking sweet and not savory, it seems like it’s actually possible to use alternative rising agents without too much trouble.”

He pauses. “Rising agent. That sounds much more exciting than it is. ‘Ready to go, Johnny-lad?’ ‘Yeah, I’ll just get my rising agent.’ Uh!” He laughs. “Somebody stop me.”

“We will also need some alternatives to the dairy. In this case we’re really quite fond of almond milk these days,” he holds up a carton, “so I think I’ll just use that. And then this recipe calls specifically for non-dairy yoghurt, which I have no experience with, but I found this soy one. Sidenote: we really like this soy cream? which can be beaten just like regular cream and actually makes for a really good whipped cream.” 

He puts all the non-dairy down and stares into the camera. “Listen to me! I swear I have not been abducted by aliens.” He laughs again. “I just think it’s important to try to reduce our carbon footprint, and honestly we in this household have A Lot of airplane travel to make up for.”

[Another jump cut to a close-up of a bag of flour, jaunty music playing. The bag moves in stop motion across the counter, followed by the other ingredients. Phil in voice-over: “We will also need all of these: some self-raising flour, bicarbonate of soda, caster sugar, vanilla extract, and plant-based margarine! And some icing sugar and shredded coconut for frosting.” The icing sugar toddles across the counter as if it is trying to catch up to the other ingredients.]

[Cut back to Phil by the kitchen island.] “First up, we have to combine the margarine and the caster sugar. I’ll just measure out the 225 grams of sugar.” Jump cut to the scales standing on the counter and Phil pouring sugar and singing, “Pour - some - sugar on meee.” Most of it goes on the scale, but some ends up on the counter. He tries to stop pouring, but it keeps coming. “Agh! Stop! Too much sugar!” He puts the bag down and tries to pour some back. More sugar ends up on the counter. “Oh no! Guys I’m really trying!” He laughs and spills more sugar.

“Alright. That’s actually fairly accurate.” He films the scales saying 227g with his iPhone.

He pops the phone back in his back pocket and reaches for the glass mixing bowl, which settles on the sugar-strewn counter with a slight crunch. He tips the sugar in.

“Now I just need to measure out 150g of margarine.” He takes the block and unwraps it, then reaches for a large bright green serrated kitchen knife. “I think I need a little over half of this?” He glances up with a shrug, then places the huge knife gingerly on the block. He pushes down and the knife goes easily, but then he forces it to the side to twist the block in two so it scrapes against the counter and tears the paper. “Oh, it’s kind of sticking.” He pinches two fingers around the larger block of margarine and pulls it from the knife, but the serrated edge hasn’t cut all the way through, and the two parts come apart messily. He drops the block, torn paper still on, onto the scales, picks the paper off, and checks the weight. “Ooh, that was pretty good. We need a bit more.” He cuts another wedge and adds it.

“Okay, it’s time to get mixing.” He grabs the mixer and holds it like a gun, leaning backwards in a ~~Charlie’s Angels~~ James Bond pose. 

The mixer is on the counter, and Phil is holding up his iPhone. “I’m a bit close-up challenged without my lovely assistant, but let’s see if we can’t make this work.” 

Phil is cradling the bowl in one arm, holding the mixer with the other and has his iPhone in his mouth. [There’s a cut to the blurry iPhone view of the electric mixer rotating in the mixture, then a short tumble and a brief black screen before we cut back to the stationary cam view of Phil.] He yells and yanks the mixer out of the bowl, spraying sugary margarine everywhere before stopping the machine. He glances at the camera, puts the mixer down, steps closer to the camera and tips the bowl so we can see his iPhone in the mixture. At this point he begins to laugh uncontrollably and picks the phone out of the batter. He makes an unconscious movement as if to wipe it on his bum and then seems to think better of it at the last moment, which somehow makes him laugh even harder. 

[Phil goes abruptly quiet and there’s a jump zoom to his face very close up.] The sound has been magnified in the edit, so there’s a distinct white noise sound, but it’s possible to hear Dan’s voice calling, “...need to come in there?”

[The zoom pans out a little as Phil answers.] “No. I’m good, we’re all good!” He laughs silently while looking into the camera and pressing a finger to his lips conspiratorially.

[Jump cut] and Phil is back in front of the counter, the margarine and sugar thoroughly combined in front of him. There’s a slight streak of white across his left cheek and a large smudge across his apron. He takes a deep breath. “I swear I am not trying to look like an idiot. I already got batter everywhere! I have to really step up now or I’m not going to survive this night.” His eyes flicker briefly towards the direction Dan is in.

“We’re combining all the wet ingredients with this stuff now. Watch me measure out neatly and without spillage!”

[Tense music plays as Phil balances a measuring cup over the bowl and slowly pours almond milk.] He fills the cup to the brim without spilling, then tips it from so high up that it splashes when it lands in the bowl. Wide-eyed stare for the camera. Cut to Phil carefully scooping yoghurt out of the scales bowl, then tipping vanilla extract onto a tablespoon and stirring it in. He picks up a wooden spoon and stirs slowly and with great care. 

Phil sighs and gives a big smile, holding the bowl in both hands as it rests on the counter. “There, that wasn’t nerve-racking at all!” He looks down at the bowl. “Smells good. Oh, I’m actually pretty excited about this! I feel if it works I might be able to convince my mum there might be something to this whole vegan thing. I don’t know, maybe it’s a generational thing, but my parents are definitely quite leery of alternative cooking? Dan’s family have been eating vegetarian for years, but I definitely don’t think my mum believes there’s such a thing as a good cake without copious amounts of eggs.” His accent becomes more Northern as he speaks. “I’m actually just hoping I could get her hooked on vegan baking so I can reap the rewards, as she is a much better cook than I’ll ever be. I love being in the kitchen though, I used to love helping out my mum when I was little. Especially if I got to wear one of her flowery aprons, which she wouldn’t let me wear just for playing about in.” He laughs. “Wow, I can’t believe I invented helping out around the house just so I could dress up!”

He takes one of the smaller mixing bowls. “Alright. It is time to combine our dry ingredients. All two.”

He takes the unopened bag of flour. It seems to be thoroughly sealed. Phil struggles, hands shaking. Just as he begins to say something, he pulls too hard and the bag tears. “Oh!” The bag rips all the way down and the flour goes everywhere, cascading across the kitchen island. “Oh no!” Phil is desperately trying to hold the flour inside the bag with both hands. “Dan! Danny! Help!” He’s laughing and squirming and scrunching up his face.

We can just make out rushing foot steps and Dan’s, “Wot?”

Phil is still laughing. “I’m spilling flour everywhere, help!”

Dan walks slowly just into frame. He’s wearing the same clothes from earlier, a black hoodie and grey joggers, hair messily pushed up high on his forehead. He pauses for a moment just to stare. “Jesus Christ, Phil.”

“I know!” Phil is still clutching the bag. 

“Just let go, man.” 

“No, I don’t want to let it all spill.”

Dan inches closer. He looks at the counter. “Did you also spill the entire sugar bowl?”

“No!” 

Dan gives him a look.

“I didn’t! They’re my witnesses!” He nods at the camera.

“You’re gonna edit this out.” He looks at Phil, his face in profile, his back slumped and relaxed.

Phil straightens up a bit. “Why?”

Dan sighs. “I guess if you edit out all your mess-ups you’ll end up with a three minute video.”

“Hey!”

Dan shoots a wink at the camera. “We’re gonna need a bigger bowl,” he says loudly. Then he goes up to Phil and hip bumps him slightly out of the way so he can reach down and open one of the cupboards under the kitchen island. He pulls out a big plastic tub and holds it under the counter’s edge. “Scoot it here.” Phil lets the bag of flour drop into the tub and Dan puts it on the counter. 

“Mate. Phil.” He surveys the mess in front of them. “How you doing?”

“How’re YOU doing?” Phil goes as if to chest-bump him, but they don’t touch. 

Dan gives him a fondly exasperated look. Then he looks more closely. “You’ve got a...” he gestures to Phil’s cheek. 

“Oh.” Phil rubs his cheek.

“You are such a disaster.” Dan looks down at the floor. “You are cleaning this up yourself, Phil. I am not helping you.”

Phil crosses his arms in front of his chest. “Of course. I’m actually doing pretty well.”

“Oh, are you?” Dan chuckles. His gaze lands on the oven. “Aren’t you supposed to pre-heat the oven?”

Phil stares at him. “Oh. Um. Oops?” 

Dan laughs. “You spoon!”

Phil waves his flour-covered hands in Dan’s face. “Stop harassing me! I have it 90% under control! I can do this! Leave me alone!”

Dan just laughs harder. “90%? Really? Is that how you thank me for running to your floury rescue?”

“Alright fine. Thank you for saving me. You’re a good bbbpal.”

“Oh, I’m a good bal, am I? A good bal.”

Phil can’t stop giggling. “The best bal. Now go away, I want this to be a surprise. Will you come back when they’re finished?”

“I’m sure I’ll be back when you try to burn the house down.” Dan gives him one last once-over and shakes his head before he walks out of frame the way he came.

[Cut to Phil centered in front of the camera again.] The counter has been swept clean, and he has the two bowls sitting right in front of him with a metal sieve next to them. “We’re almost there, guys. We can do this!” He pops his bicep briefly and makes an exaggerated frown. 

“All we have to do now is sieve the mixture of flour and bicarbonate of soda into the wet ingredients.” He holds the sieve over the glass bowl and tips the flour in, shaking the sieve. Most of the flour actually goes into the bowl. [Applause and yayyy-sound effect.]

“Now that we have our finished batter, it’s time scoop it into... this!” He holds up a silicone muffin pan and flops it around a bit.

[The steady cam has been zoomed in on the muffin pan. Soothing music is playing as Phil fills the cups with batter - somewhat messily and unevenly. He tries to smooth some of the dollops that have missed into the cups and smears the batter around.]

[View back in full perspective.] Phil tries lifting the pan, but it wobbles dangerously. “Uh. Hang on,” he mutters. 

He goes to the oven and opens the door, and the fan noise becomes audible. He reaches into the oven for the baking tray. “Ow! Wait.” He lets the oven slam shut and looks around.

“Use the oven mitt!” Dan shouts at the same time from somewhere close by the camera.

Phil jumps and looks. “Go away!” He laughs and finally finds the oven mitt, pulls out the tray, puts it on the counter and slides the muffin pan onto it with only minimal spillage. 

He puts the tray back in the oven and turns back around, leaning heavily on the counter. “Phew. Alright! We made it to our intermission! I’ll let these bake and then they have to cool entirely, so I think it’s time for my dinner, and I’ll be back when it’s time to decorate!”

[Intermission screen is a several second iPhone shot of the cupcakes baking, with a cartoon clock in the upper right corner and the two baby chick pictures from earlier tipping backwards and forwards to the music in the lower left.]

Phil is back in his spot by the island. The cupcakes have been taken out of the pan and are sitting on a cooling rack next to him.

“I’m realising I completely forgot to tell you what I’m making, but you’ve seen the title of the video, so I suppose you already know.” He takes out his phone. “I was scrolling through recipe blogs for ideas, and I came across these ‘bunny bum cupcakes’, which are just amazing.” He laughs and turns his phone to the camera. [The screen is edited to fill with several images of cupcakes decorated to look like bunnies diving headfirst into them, their butts and feet sticking up.] “Look at them! It just looks like they’re going to town!” He turns the phone back to look again himself. “I suppose it’s meant to look like it’s diving into its hole? Its little Easter Bunny warren? But it just looks like it’s... munching that grass. A very eager bunny. We’re gonna make lots of them.”

He slips his phone away again. “There are lots of different versions of this, so naturally I went for one I think I can actually pull off. We’re going to need some more dairy-free margarine, the icing sugar, a bit more vanilla extract and a drop of almond milk.”

He takes the last mixing bowl. [The film speeds up as he measures out a new set of ingredients and adds them to the bowl. The background music is equally sped up. The film slows down once the ingredients have been added.] “Now we need to mix it until it’s fluffy.” We speed up again as he goes to use the electric mixer - without incident this time.

“I’ll cover these with frosting, and then it’s time for some bunny butt decorating.” Phil picks up the first cupcake and smears frosting on top. 

[Cut to all the cupcakes having been frosted.] “The most important aspect of our bunny bums are clearly the tails.” Phil shows us an already opened bag of marshmallows. “I’ve managed to save some of these mini marshmallows, so let’s plop them on there.” He pops a marshmallow on each cupcake.

“The penultimate decorating ingredient is shredded coconut.” Phil raises his hands. “I know this is a divisive subject, and if you don’t like coconut you can obviously just skip it and just have a slightly less fluffy bunny butt. I’m going to cover half of these and let the other half be without.” He takes a bag and sprinkles a copious amount over half the cupcakes.

“Alright, guys, this is the point where I admit I’ve cheated.” He holds up a plastic packet and covers his eyes with the other hand. “I found these pre-made bunny feet online. I know! I could’ve made them myself using roll-out icing and some food coloring, but I was just too lazy!” He flops dramatically. 

“It’s the final step, guys. One tiny bunny slipper for mankind, one giant leap headfirst into a massive cake for this bunny.” He nudges two bunny feet decoration buttons onto the cupcake. [A zoomy in and out iPhone shot of the first completed bunny butt cupcake.] “Yesss! Let’s do the rest.”

Phil is standing in front of the finished cupcakes. “Dan!” he calls. “D’you wanna come here for a second?”

[Cut to Phil looking just out of frame.] Dan says, “Did you make more accidents?”

“No, I made cupcakes! Come look. Wanna taste one?”

Dan’s head creeps into view. He looks around slowly, including into the camera. Then he steps into view in slow motion. “Did you break anything?”

“I’ll break you,” Phil replies by rote. Dan veers back slightly, hands up in joke placation. “No, I actually managed just fine, thank you.”

Dan points at the camera. “You know I’ll see everything, right?”

Phil ignores him and inches the plate of cupcakes closer towards him. “Come see what I made.”

Dan steps up to him fully and looks. Then he belly laughs. “Did you—? Are they..?”

“Bunny bum cupcakes,” Phil says, smiling proudly.

“What!” Dan laughs. “These actually look really good, Phil! Wow! Look at their fluffy little butts!” He laughs again. “What happened over here, Phil?” He points.

“Uh, they’re genetically tailless rabbits. Don’t point, you’ll just embarrass them.”

“Did you actually eat all the marshmallows so you didn’t have enough for decoration?”

“I may have miscalculated slightly.”

“Right. As long as that’s all you’ve miscalculated.”

“We’ll find out soon enough. Are you ready to try one?” Phil picks one up for himself.

Dan takes another. “Wow. They really are just... sticking their bums out.”

“Yeah, I hope they’re as good as they look.”

Dan gives him a look. Then he looks at the cupcake and laughs again. “Oh my god. It really just looks so cute and adorable.” His voice goes high at the end of the sentence as he lifts the cupcake close to his face. Then he lets his voice drop. “I’m gonna eat that fluffy piece of tail!” He opens his mouth wide but then only takes a moderate bite off the top.

Phil laughs and follows suit, taking a bite off the top and side.

“Mmm! Phil!” Dan says around the cake in his mouth. “This is good! So much sugar!” He closes his eyes.

Phil tastes and lets his eyes go wide. “Yeah, these are pretty good! Can you taste they’re vegan?”

Dan opens his eyes wide and looks at him. “They are?”

“Yeah, I wanted to try some egg-free baking.”

Dan rests his hand on his chest. “No chicken fetuses were used in the making of this video? Aww, Phil! I really appreciate that. And they taste so good as well!” He lets out a pleased laugh.

Phil takes another bite off his cupcake. “I’m pretty good at this!”

“You are, actually,” Dan smiles, eyes crinkling. He takes another bite. “Mmm! Hard recommend! Where can they find this recipe, Phil!?”

“They can find it in the description box below,” Phil replies and gestures for the camera. 

“Mm! Make sure you subscribe to Phil for more delicious content like this!”

Phil gestures to the side. “And make sure you subscribe to Dan to be notified when he uploads HIS new content, which will be... soon?”

“Soon,” Dan smiles.

[There’s a small jump-cut.]

“You know what time it is now, Phil?” Dan says.

“What?”

“Time to cleeeaaan!” He ducks his head down between his shoulders and rubs his hands together.

“Ugh!” Phil rolls his eyes. Then he gives Dan a cheeky look. “Are you going to do that thing where you clean everything again after I’ve cleaned it already?”

For a millisecond Dan gapes and seems to stop himself from glancing at the camera. Then he laughs. “Same way I do every night.”

Phil looks into the camera. “Dan really is that kind of person where you’ll get up in the middle of the night to get a glass of water and he’ll be cleaning.”

Dan shrugs. “Insomnia cleaning is a totally valid activity. Now say goodbye, Phil.”

“Goodbye, Phil!” he calls and waves. “Happy Easter!” He picks up his cupcake and takes a big bite.

[The screen goes dark. The shot is from an iPhone once again, cam filter over top. At the top it says “shame cam”. The camera pans over the messy kitchen, lovingly zooming in on every dollop of batter that has landed in unfortunate places, then coming to Phil’s dark blue apron and panning down to reveal mismatched socks completely covered in flour.]

**Author's Note:**

> I hope the idea of vegan baking doesn’t offend you and that you find it somewhat in character!
> 
> I based the cupcakes off this recipe: https://www.thevegspace.co.uk/recipe-easy-vanilla-vegan-cupcakes. The style of Phil’s decorations is based on this recipe: https://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/bunny-butt-cupcakes. Full disclosure: I haven’t actually tried either, but I kind of want to now! The bunny feet only seem to be available in the US, but I hope the rest of the baking is credible. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! [Like/reblog on tumblr.](http://calvinahobbes.tumblr.com/post/184250262215)


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